Background Access to appropriate and affordable healthcare is needed to achieve better health outcomes in Africa. However, access to healthcare remains low, especially among the poor. In Zambia, poor access exists despite the policy by the government to remove user fees in all primary healthcare facilities in the public sector. The paper has two main objectives: (i) to examine the factors assoc...

Introduction Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a common nosocomial infection in critically ill patients that is associated with poor clinical and economic outcomes, including longer duration of mechanical ventilation, longer ICU and hospital stay, increased mortality, and increased hospital charges [1–3]. It is the leading cause of death among nosocomial infections, exceeding rates of de...

Long Term Care Facilities (LTCFs) play a key role in guaranteeing care to patients in developed countries. Many patients, mostly elderly, access LTCFs at some time in their lives, and their healthcare pathways often require them to move back and forth between hospital and outpatient settings. These patterns bring about new challenges regarding infection control, especially healthcare associated...

Healthcare settings are dangerous places. For those receiving care, the risk of unintended harm from healthcare failures continues to be significant. Given this, there is a need to monitor standards in healthcare, not only to identify potential issues, but also to plan and evaluate interventions aimed at improving healthcare standards. Public reporting of performance standards is one aspect to ...

Currently, (2019-2020) COVID-19 global pandemic is caused by a member of the Coronaviridae group. Some human viruses are spread from to way droplets or aerosols, but fewer persistently airborne in transmission, and healthcare-associated epidemic viral infection restricted very few surrogates. The prevention air pollutants (i.e., biological, particles, chemicals, smoke) at resource has highest e...

BACKGROUND Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) and Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase producing-Klebsiella pneumoniae (KPC-Kp) bloodstream infection (BSI) are emerging health-care associated (HCA) diseases of public health concern, in terms of morbidity, mortality, and insufficient response to antibiotic therapy. Both agents can be acquired in the hospital but clinical disease can develop in...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed at evaluating the predictors and outcomes associated with multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacterial (MDR-GNB) infections in an oncology pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). METHODS Data were collected relating to all episodes of GNB infection that occurred in a PICU between January of 2009 and December of 2012. GNB infections were divided into two groups for comp...

This report is based on a Hygienist Panel Meeting held at St Anne's Manor, Wokingham on 24-25 June 2009. The panel agreed that greater use should be made of antiseptics to reduce reliance on antibiotics with their associated risk of antibiotic resistance. When choosing an antiseptic for clinical use, the Biocompatibility Index, which considers both the microbiocidal activity and any cytotoxic e...

Aseptic technique is the most commonly performed infection prevention procedure in healthcare; it is also probably the most critical. This article looks at the aseptic non touch technique (ANTT) model for reducing healthcare-associated infections (HCAI). It outlines the principles of ANTT and the approach to practice, and discusses the challenges health professionals still face in reducing HCAIs.